Chapter 6

Apparitions of various dreams flooded into his mind. Visions of people and places he remembered. Grey Fox, Big Boss, Colonel Campbell, Zanzibar... and her. Suddenly he felt a cold feeling trickle down his spine and then his world turned white. Completely vastless, devoid of life. He looked around, realizing he had entered a dimension full of nothing but emptiness and more emptiness.

Snake looked around, with the only friend by his side the SOCOM clutched tightly to his grasp. His head began to spin and then suddenly everything around him froze. He could hear a voice. At first, it was far but then it loomed closer and at that point it became clearly audible.

"Mister Hayter," boomed the grim yet serene tone of the mysterious voice.

"Who the hell are you?" Snake shouted.

"Patience, Mister Hayter. You will find out soon enough what this is all about." The voice disappeared as the lone agent tried to figure out where the voice had been coming from him. Nothing since these last few days had been making sense to him. Nothing at all. Maybe this mysterious voice could have an explanation. Or so he hoped.

The world around Snake suddenly changed with the appearance of the same Brooklyn Bridge flooded back into view. The same spot where he decided not to jump off onto the tanker below. He looked around as his clothes had a new trench coat covering him, the same one he wore only a few days ago. He reached inside his pocket, finding a pair of cigarettes. He put it back and looked around as rain started to come down.

There was a certain sense of nostalgia that overcame the ex-FoxHound member, something that he could feel would bring nothing but more trouble upon him. "Mr. Hayter, you had a choice did you not?" the voice boomed again, this time covering the noise of the rain. It felt as if someone had been speaking to him telepathically.

"You had a choice whether or not you were going to jump off this bridge and go on to the tanker below and yet you chose not to. Any particular reason?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Mister Hayter. You have no one to kid but yourself. I know everything and anything about you already. The incident on Zanzibar. The deaths of Grey Fox and Big Boss. You're wondering what ever happened to your master, or the Colonel. But most important of all... you're thinking about her, aren't you?"

Snake remained silent.

The world around him, the Brooklyn Bridge, suddenly faded into another white room. But instead, the new one he had entered consisted mainly of televion screens set up in a circle around the perimeter of the room. In front of him was desk and a chair which now seated a rather old man.

"Where the hell am I now?" Snake finally asked, breaking the silence that permitted between them. "And who are you?"

The old man sat up. "I am the architect. Welcome to my world, Solid Snake."

"What do you mean your world? " snarled the agent.

"I am the architect, the creator of the Matrix. You see, this is the seventh time I've recreated the Matrix, except this time-- something went wrong. Snake, you were an anomoly. Out of your own intricate Matrix system that we had set aside for a special control group, you seeped through the actual Matrix. A mistake, a flaw."

Snake did not have an utter clue what the old man was talking about. He would have to ask Morpheus about it later so he took note and just listened.

"I'm not part of this half-assed world then," Snake muttered. "Figures."

"But," the architect pointed out. "There is no cause without reason. You were thrown here for a reason. And that reason is up for you to find out."

Finally Snake understood. "To stop the Matrix."

"You think you can, you know you can, but your choices will have to depend on how that will work."

"I don't see how this will affect me," Snake snapped back.

The archetect smiled. "Have you forgotten about ... her?"

He fell silent and waited as the architect continued to talk. "She might be a part of this world Snake. You might be able to save her... but then again, will you abandon those who seek help from you at the most dire time?"

Snake grimaced. "What the hell have you done with her?"

The architect looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then shifted his attention back to Snake. "My time is up, but the choice is left to you, Solid Snake." With that said, everything suddenly disappeared from him and he felt a cold stab at the back of his neck.

Snake's eyes shot open, only realizing later that he had just jacked out of the Matrix. "What the hell just happened?" he shouted gruffly.

Trinity bent down besides him. "You were ... stuck in the Matrix, Snake. Right after you jumped, we thought we had lost you. Tank couldn't find your neural patterns until up to two seconds ago. We jacked you out automatically. We were hoping you could tell us what the hell just happened."

Snake sat up, remembering what he had just heard from his mysterios encounter. He looked up at the others. "Have you ever heard of the architect?"

Trinity, Morpheus and Neo quickly exchanged glances and then stared at the man still attired in the trademark sneaking suit. "You've... heard of the architect?" Neo asked with a gulp, not really wanting to hear the answer.

The agent looked up at the others, pausing to take note of their facial expressions. "He spoke to me just before. It was like-- like a dream sequence. He said that I had two choices; something about choosing to save your world or one to save... this person I once knew."

"Did you choose?" Morpheus asked impatiently.

"No," Snake replied.

"What could this all mean?" Trinity asked the others, wondering if they could think of some reasonable answer. "We went through hell just to get Neo to talk with the architect and Snake meets him... in a dream sequence."

"What's all this supposed to mean?" Snake shot back.

Neo grimaced, folding his arms. "There's no question about it. We have to take him to the Oracle."